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<title>A Love Letter to a New England Stream by Time_Lord42 (AwesomestPrussian)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25027150">A Love Letter to a New England Stream</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomestPrussian/pseuds/Time_Lord42'>Time_Lord42 (AwesomestPrussian)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>No Fandom, Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Author Is Sleep Deprived, I Don't Even Know, Nature, Nature is awesome, POV First Person, i love nature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:49:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25027150</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomestPrussian/pseuds/Time_Lord42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some places where you just feel alive.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Love Letter to a New England Stream</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There are places in the mountains you can pull off the road, go down a little trail, to these beautiful, pure, untouched streams. There's no mud, or very little, just rocks. You can see cairns people have built in the stream or on the shore, stacking small piles of rocks on top of the large, flat ones that sit in the sun.<br/>
</p><p>You kick off your shoes, put them on the bank or on a rock, roll your pant legs up your shins, and wade in. The water is always freezing, but it's clean and pure and cleansing, and the cold shock wears off quickly enough. When you take a deep breath, you breathe in clean air, and it's pure. You might cup a little water in your palms and drink it, and you won't even think to worry about what might be in it, because it doesn't matter in that moment.<br/>
</p><p>You might feel moved, by some deep instinctual force, to make a cairn of your own. You don't know why, but you're so swept up in the rightness of that moment that you do. You take time picking the right rocks, without knowing what you're looking for, but knowing when you've found it. The sun beats on your back, and you've never felt so in tune with the world, so unburdened.<br/>
</p><p>When you've finished your stack, you step back. You take a final breath, and you step out of the river. You might sit on a flat, sun-warmed rock for a minute as your feet dry. Then you roll down your pants, walk back up the bank to your car, and get in. You might sit for a minute and take one more breath of one-ness, before you drive off and return to your life.<br/>
</p><p>Nothing has changed, and everything has changed. The world goes on the same way it always has, but you have shifted.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I don't know how you stumbled across this, or why you opened it, but you did, so thank you.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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